


Four Walls

by catty_the_spy



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Forced Marriage, Gen, Isolation, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8622187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: A lonely honeymoon.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the h/c bingo prompt “trapped together”. First person. Word count: 1470.

There are pre-wedding photos: us, kissing goodnight after the winning cake was chosen; us, greeting a crowd waiting at the train station; Prim’s first impression of the train; my mother eating breakfast with Peeta’s parents; final fittings; a one-armed hug from Haymitch; final bits and pieces of decoration.

There is a ceremony that passes in a haze: President Snow toasting us; a cake being cut; Peeta whispering in my ear “They keep thanking me as if I had something to do with the food.”

The clearest moment of the night is hugging Prim one last time before we are taken to our honeymoon suite in the heart of the capitol.

Peeta and I drink champagne out of tiny bottles; no matter how much we take, the machine never runs out. The tub could’ve fit ten of us, but we sit huddled in one corner with our tiny bottles, letting candy scented bubbles dry on our arms.

“I think they expect us to….”

I wait, but Peeta lets the sentence hang. I shiver a bit, once I catch on.

There are rose petals leading a path to the bedroom, but we haven’t gone near it. Our clothes came off at the door, and we took off our underwear when we got into the bath.

“I don’t want to,” Peeta says, so softly I can barely hear him. “Not here. It’s too…”

“It’s not home,” I say for him. I’m thinking along the same lines. “What can we get away with?”

“I don’t really know.” He scratches the back of his head, making his hair stick up. “They might not ask about it at all. Let’s…not worry about it. We can just go to bed.”

“Yeah.”

 

The first day of our honeymoon, we watch Quarter Quell speculation. This is our first year as mentors, and our tributes will be several years older than us. It’s better than the alternative; with our luck, we would have been mentoring two twelve year olds.

“Look at it this way,” Peeta says, “either way they’ll get a ton of sponsors.”

 

I call Prim and tell mom to say hi to anyone else. Peeta doesn’t have any messages to send.

We eat the smallest breakfast they will give us and wander around the suite looking for something to do. Neither of us is eager to brave the busy Capitol streets.

We get more than just official broadcasts here. There are stupid kid’s shows, something called Better Know A District, and a bunch of things only people in the Capitol would care about – popular restaurants, most fashionable body-mods, latest decorating trends, tiny toys that change shape and talk and give you compliments. We spend hours just messing with the remote.

We watch Better Know a District for a while. The newest episodes are about District Twelve. Aside from the standard propaganda, there is a spotlight on our families. Peeta’s brothers, Rye and Dango, are shown flirting with girls, and betting on their brother’s survival. Mr. and Mrs. Mellark give a brief tour of their bakery. My mother is shown using Twelve’s “primitive healing tools”. Prim’s goat, Lady, is examined and there is a brief segment on the history of the goat in Panem. They talk to Hazelle, Gale’s mother. There are distance shots of Gale, but if they did manage to talk to him, they thought better of airing his words.

I’d forgotten that they’d passed Gale off as my cousin.

There is a big family portrait that I’ve never seen, probably taken during the Victory Tour, that includes both our families. Everyone looks stiff and uneasy, but the narrators gush as if it were a national treasure.

I change the channel. It lands on one of the kid’s shows, “Lion Liam”. The victor of the seventh games is presented as a lion taming hero, who flies around Panem with a whip. The cartoon has all four limbs; in reality, he lost both his hands to the lions. They love showing the footage every time his birthday comes around.

I change the channel again and again until I land on a show about a cake factory in District One.

We sit in silence, watching machines ice cakes.

“I don’t feel well,” Peeta says, and goes to bed.

The show stops to advertise a reproduction of our wedding cake.

I don’t feel well either.

 

Two days later we are desperate for something to do.

Effie calls us on a ‘video phone’, so her face is in the corner of the screen while we watch Factory Delights.

“Wonderful news, children,” she chirps. “I’m going to take you house hunting!”

“What?”

Peeta and I share a baffled look.

“Effie, we already have a house.”

“Not in the Capitol you don’t, and that’s what we’re going to remedy. In two weeks you and I will visit some of the finest homes in the Capitol, and the whole of Panem will get to see which one you choose. I know you’ll insist on going back to Twelve before the reaping, but think about how nice it will be to finish your honeymoon in your very own home!”

She’s glowing. It might just be her make-up.

She keeps talking. Housing trends, neighborhoods – I don’t think it’s ever going to end.

Finally she stops to actually look at us, sitting in bits and pieces of our wedding clothes.

“My…I seem to have interrupted something.”

I’m ready to protest, but this seems to be what Peeta was waiting for.

“Effie, how are we supposed to go anywhere? We didn’t pack any money.”

“The concierge will call a cab for you.”

What’s a concierge? “What’s a cab?”

Effie doesn’t answer us, too busy setting things up for the house hunt. She forwards us to Portia, who seems to know what we have better than we do.

It turns out there’s a small rectangular stick, which has our money on it. A cab is a car that we pay to take us to stores, but we don’t need one because we have one of our own, and a chauffer.

“I know a few places you can go for something more casual to wear,” Portia says.

I look down at myself. I’m wearing my wedding underwear and Peeta’s undershirt. The only clothes I have are my wedding dress and a tiny slip of fabric that might be a nightgown.

“Thank you,” we say, and we really mean it.

“Do you know how we can borrow something in the meantime?”

“No need to borrow anything,” Portia says. She flips her hair out of her eyes – a literal rainbow reaching down her back. “I’ll have to ask Cinna for your measurements Katniss.”

She doesn’t hang up. Instead another box appears on the screen. Something on Portia’s end clicks while we wait.

Nobody needs to tell Cinna what the problem is.

“I’m sending you something,” he says as soon as he sees us.

“You’re a life saver,” says Portia. “They want to go shopping. I gave them a list of stores they might like, but it might be easier if you went with them. I’d do it myself, but…”

“Give me ten minutes,” Cinna says.

He hangs up.

 

Cinna shows up with clothes and several bags and boxes.

“You can’t go out,” he tells us, apologetic. “I’m sorry. But I brought you something to pass the time.”

He gives us the gift of books, games, art supplies, and most of all his company. He stays as long as he can. He shows us how to play the games.

But he can’t stay. Someone sends an Avox to fetch him.

“Overzealous security,” he says.

The security is to keep us under control rather than protect us. Cinna knows that.

Without him, Peeta and I are alone. Not even Avoxes come inside.

 

We play the games and watch the shows on the television. We feel more human with proper clothes to wear. We sit by the window and pretend we can see the people below instead of colored blobs and the sides of other buildings.

I call Prim, but if I stay on the phone too long it cuts off.

Peeta reads and rereads the books and starts to draw in the margins.

Effie doesn’t call again, but Portia and Cinna do. They call as much as they can.

Would it be different if this were a real honeymoon? Would we want to be alone in this suite with no visitors allowed? Would we resent our stylists for checking on us?

We watch the Quell coverage.

“They’ll let us go home for the reaping,” Peeta says.

We’re both trying not to think of the house we’re being moved to in the Capitol. We’ll be trapped there, too, for our “safety”.

“They’ll let us go home for the reaping,” Peeta says.

He takes my hand.


End file.
